Access to the sacrament of the Eucharist has been weaponized against all those the church deems unworthy, immoral, or in sin. The sacrament that was meant to be a way of knowing and encountering the risen Christ through breaking and sharing of bread has been made into its opposite.
In the face of systemic injustice, it is difficult to hold space for a desire for peace and the knowledge that empires usually outlast the people who protest against them. While it may be tempting to shut down at feelings of powerlessness, the Magnificat gives us another option. We can be like Mary and the generations before her, singing and hoping and praying for change.
Mary, an unmarried peasant girl, is pregnant. Though scarcely an intimidating figure, her words in the song ascribed to her in Luke’s Gospel—known as “The Magnificat”—ought to make those of us who are privileged people stop to think, if not to fear.
Scripture records the political history of the people of God, and if Jesus is the key to the Scripture he must also be the key that unlocks its political history.
When we work towards the eradication of structures that perpetuate poverty in our communities, those that divide us, systems that perpetuate classism or any form of caste system, we each become the light that others see around them. This is also how we embody the glory of God as was experienced by the shepherds in the Lukan narrative.
“Christ the King” on the cross offers a way of exposing systemic injustice by hanging in solidarity with victims of a violent system, but refusing to buy into the same violence that sustains it.
The theo-political impulse of this parable is this: one needs to address the inequality of perceptions that manifest both in society and sacred places.
To be neutral in this world is similar to being cruel and being, ourselves, the oppressor. Following Jesus signals an end to neutrality.
Luke’s wordplay allows us to see this story as something larger than a particular Jesus event with a particular woman in a particular synagogue on a particular Sabbath. A one-off, straightforward healing event can be described without such wordplay. Through the creativity of his storytelling, Luke makes this moment a signal event, about a Daughter of Abraham and the work of the Christ.
Luke states with exquisite and unmistakable clarity that God will not hesitate to silence those with power, and give a bullhorn to those without power, even ensuring that—if need be—the creation itself will speak justice into the world.
Luke 15:11-32 serves as a warning instead of model to imitate.